


Vatel, the best man in France

by HelenofTroy



Category: Vatel (2000)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 19:45:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8414206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelenofTroy/pseuds/HelenofTroy
Summary: The letter that Anne de Montausier left to her bastard daughter Marie, talking about her father, François Vatel and her love for him while her youth , finding a noble man in a world of "snakes" like Anne named the Louis XIV court inside her own mind. The same Court that she left dishonoured, that killed to Vatel, the love of her life, father of her daughter, but who wanted Vatel with more vehemently than the most passionate woman. For first time Versailles wanted a lover that never loved her. Not just the king Louis saw Versailles like a woman, but Vatel too. One simple chef knew what the king pretended. One simple chef humiliated all to a court, depriving it of his genius.





	

"My Dearest Marie:  
There was a small window in his room, at the Vatel´s , stuck to the roof. For it the birds who made their nests on the roofs of the Château de Chantilly could be seen.  
Like the window that i have in this Chateau, my little farm Montausier. Maybe for that I chose this room explicitly. I have yet next to me all the little objects that I could save of your father, Francois Vatel, after his death.  
I was pregnant when he killed himself, and...i just wanted have a little more of him. I paid a lot of for those objects of a chef dead, that for anyone else would be trinkets. But i just met your father while 3 days, and i keep those letters and utensils of him, almost for treat of meet him better through them, through their touch, their smell. They´re normal things: three letters who he wrote for me, one of his treatises on the grapes, his pot, and one of the little figures that adorned the ice flowers that he sent me once. Even I have his chisel, and some sugar from his kitchen ...  
i have his heeled shoes. They have all its worn soles.  
He walked a lot, my daughter. It is what i most remember him curiously. Always walking, always in a hurry, always seeking perfection (loved by many but that he had too much, maybe if he had borned with less he would be here with me now, aging with me, looking me write this letter that would be for your aunt, my dear sister surely). In that was like you, Marie, always impatient, always active, nervous.

You've never been a quiet girl, my angel. From your first steps you have always been busy. First with your dolls , changing their dresses, then with the choice of your suitors when you were a woman. I remember right now when you were 2, and just one year ago that you walked when you you went eight times to your room with your mistress to change the suit to Anne, your favorite doll, just because the doll had pink cheeks. You said "no, the dress has to be colored flesh, to match".  
How i laughed my dearest daughter! You have seen my only light in this world, Marie. When i see your eyes i see the François eyes. For the world he was Vatel, but not for me. You have his blue eyes, his blonde hair, as clear as the first mails. You have few of me. The people always have said that i was beautiful. More than your father. 

And probably i was. I was intrigued by the eye of a king once. I seduced the most infamous man of Versailles, the Marquis de Lauzun, and i won the heart of Vatel, your father.  
I was 18, and though i was not the lady most youngest of Versailles at all, i was new there. But sine the same beginning there was something wrong with me, Marie.  
I was not like the another women. I was of distracted character, of deep staring, complicated desires & demading mind and i always have appreciated much more the most beautiful words of a poem than of a face. A woman like that there was not place in a Court like Versailles. I loved your father since the same moment that my eyes saw him because he was like me. He was misunderstood, simple, beautiful but strange. 

When i met him he was witnessing as the king's men applied a corrective to a woman of his people. François was a commoner, but for the world was the genius. France never saw a man like him a lot of writers said after his death, and any other king, except Louis XIV had a man of the likes of your father.  
Because Vatel does not deserve to be remembered because all his works, his their artwork in the real scenarios or because his royal meals full of flowers, sugar and candied fruit.  
Not even because command the wind to stop, or for sculpt angels of ice more beautiful than Michelangelo´s. François deserves to be remembered for all what he defended, for all what he sacrified and all the things that he never give them up. For him was more important the life of one of his grooms than to applause from the king. Once time one young man, in fact was nothing but a boy, died hanged by a horse that broke the rope that held the boy while the favorite singer of King was being climbed to the heights, emulating he was the moon, singing to the night an aria while the king was delighting with the show, full of fireworks and with snow that later falled on top the royal table where all we were. 

I was next to him, because the king had asked my company that night. Athenais like the Vatel´s woman before, was needing a corrective, for that the king for humilliate Athenais de Montespan needed me in his bed. My body was with with the king this night. But my heart was with François this same afternoon. I went to see him when his boy died in his arms. I had seen the glory of Vatel in his awesome scenario, full of dancers, full of bright and stars, but now when i went next to him i saw the endless sadness of that man who did not doubt in tear his wig and throw it out to the side, as he hugged the poor corpse with his eyeholes almost departures of so many tears. 

-No, Antoine, Antoine-he said, craddling the poor guy.  
-Is his son? -i remember that i asked to someone. 

-Not, Madame, is just his boy, he meet his parents-an old lady was the only one in answer my question. 

He did not hear me, but his eyes full of tears followed me until that i until that i disappear from his eyes and he of mine. 

François Vatel hated the nobles with all his soul. Like i did. I understood his sympathy for the commoners. He was one, and though i was not for my noble birth, i always felt that i was of heart. In this place of Chantilly i learned what to be a noble is Marie, and i can conclude that i hate what i was, what i am for that i left Chantilly, i left Versailles, with 17 i was there, but with 18 i left. 

The Marquis de Lauzun wanted much more than my body, he seems that was desiring my soul, my whole heart, all my life. Just your father saved me of him. François Vatel showed to the whole Court how a man of pure heart was more valuable than the own king. Vatel did seem the king little, as small as a pebble, and much more to Lauzun, but the king wanted him anyway.  
Vatel exercised over the king an absolute attraction. When the King called Vatel did not attend. "Now no, by the God´s sake" -had answered Vatel to the King´s valet.  
It seemed that the more slights made for him against the king, Louis more admired him. 

Your father made for me two roses of glass, which weird mix was sugar & ice, and sent me them. He had been rude with myself too. He had saw me looking with coldness to that woman who was hited by the King´s men. And i read in his eyes his attraction to me, but too i read in them grief, sorrow. We had a kind of crush, but the François Vatel´s eyes when saw me the first time said "i could have love you, pity you´d be cruel, empty and vain like them, because i see in you a pure spirit". 

For all the humans beings who met him, Marie, your father was A Being touched for God Itself. Someone so honest, serious, passionate in his work, that he was absolutelly virtuous. Vatel did not have time for spend it with stupid lovers or harlots thankless only pursuing a fortune. He was an artist, and like artist he just searched the perfection. He saved to my birds, asking for the Prince de Condé. He killed the birds that he had raised for years, just for not cause me pain. 

François Vatel wore an old wig, and a black and broken apron. Cleaning shoes of all his servants boys because they worked in the kitchen, and they did not have enough men. I went to talk with him, i asked to him why he had saved my birds. 

François smiled and did not say to me anything more. That day Leuzun just asked me a night, one only night. 

-"Give yourself to me one night"-said his message, in the fruit that ironically the chef Vatel had prepared against his will, as my maids. 

I had read in his eyes the desire, the love...but was not until the afternoon of that same day when he explained me a lot of things of his life.  
All the nobles went to haunt, but i did not want go, the Queen did not go so i had free that afternoon. I remember him with his look of deep lonely making the chocolat with fruit, mixing both food in the cups. His fingers, fast and experts on the food, his eyes fixed on me. 

-Mademoiselle

His voice was was low, very low. Not was screaming and bossy as some nobles say. They did not meet him at all. François talked to me about Paris, and how with 15 he wanted study with Jehan Heverard, the famous pastry chef. He met to Fouquet and worked in his house.  
His life had been a book of adventures that i did not think in live not even.  
-Which are you talents Mademoiselle? Do you like the painting? -his tone had been so honest, so clean. 

-My only talent is open my legs, like the rest of whores of this Court-was my answer. Too much rude, too much few appropiate with a man of his senses.  
-Then the Court is a Big Brothel, Mademoiselle-answered him so fast that i did not have time for the sadness and the self-pity for bieng one of Versailles whores. 

-Yes, Even the Word of Versailles sounds like that -i said  
-Versailles is nothing but a big whore, Mademoiselle-said Vatel-is full of such men avaricious, lustful, decadent, empty, vain, arrogant, cruel, depraved and stupid as the king himself. The King said that Versailles is a godess, oh yes, those things arrive there too! All how the king says or thinks reach us, to his people. But i will let you know one thing Mademoiselle, with the same strenght that Versailles has been lifted killing to such poor devils , one day will fall. And God will be so Vindictive and Terrible that will leave Versailles feet to see herself empty. In the future only the air will run for Versailles and the King Sun just will be remembered like the King of his true people, the Nobles. 

I did not answer to him, Marie. I just know that everyone of his words pierced my mind, and after have talked, Vatel continued with his work. He always got that you´d feel yourself useless, & without heart. He was attacked by Leuzun, Leuzun had seen us together talking. 

My rejections to him were too much. My admiration for Vatel, your father more yet. 

This same night i went to sleep with François Vatel. He wanted that i´d do that, and i wantes make something for myself. Both hated this kind of life, both did not fit there. François asked to me " marry me" but i couldn´t have done that. I just remember that night that i spent with him like the night of my life. 

The François Vatel´s body was like a clear sea, his soul was like a prism of a thousand of colours, so far and deep, we loved each other by first and last time, and after that we cried. We cried because our love won´t last in this world.  
Nobody understood our love, i just hope you understand this one day, and for what i did not come to Versailles. And why i did not love to another man.  
I had more men, but any of them had the the wounds of Vatel in their bodies, nor his mild gaze, nor his innate rebelliousness. While Leuzun was forcing me to sleep with him, Vatel was running with a child in his arms throught the darkness in the night for go for the fish, having his birds dead and his dreams of have me as wife broken. 

While Leuzun was eating the food made for Vatel, his fruit full of sugar, or strocking the forms of his muses of ice, Vatel was piercing with a sword his heart because this world did not know understand him. The king wanted to Vatel in Versailles. A man like him...in the major scenario of the whole Europe, had done wonderful, divine foods and shows. But Condé lost to Vatel like if he´d be a simple dog, or an horse.  
This broke his heart absolutelly, and his soul. 

If at last he had had me, the history had been pretty different. 

-I´d give to you two thousands of my fountains if you´d give to me to your master of ceremonies-had said Louis XIV of Vatel-that man, is not a man, but a creature endowed with the greatest genius I've ever seen. That wonders.

But the only wonder that Vatel did was to you, my angel, my daughter.  
This word was not ready for have a man like François Vatel, the best man of France. The Artist of France. Louis was the King, but Vatel was the Artist of Chantilly, all started there, and all ended there, the François Vatel´s blood bathed the carpets of his traitor prince, of Condé.  
The King was bothered for his death, but the only idea of Vatel dieying for the arrival of fish make the King turn in the god that he said that he really was. 

But one only thing is truth, my dearest daughter, Louis XIV was the Nobles King, but one day Versailles, the whore, and Versailles the Godess, both in one, will be alone. 

 

Remember to your father with love, remember to me with love too when i´m gone. Because i know that in another place, in another time, we´ll be together. When you hear about the Chantitilly Cream you´ll be hearing about my days spent with him. 

Sincerely, your Mother Anne of Montasiuer, 1691


End file.
